Scared $#!+less

That moment when your heart starts beating a little faster…you know, when you can feel it in your ears…

It’s a mixture of horror… of disbelief… of regret…

It’s gone way past a simple adrenaline rush… it’s uncomfortable… maybe even painful… and all you want is for it to stop.

You think in your mind: can I make it stop? FORCE it to stop… RIGHT. NOW.

Or maybe you think: where’s the nearest exit? if I walk away now, it’ll all get better in a second. If I can’t see it, it can’t see me.

Or simply: I don’t know what to do.

The emotion you’ve just experienced could occur for any reason as long as that reason involved a stimulus that invoked a negative emotional response commonly known as: fear.

I’m obsessed with the idea of fear right now. I see fear running our lives and impacting almost every area of our generation and society. It’s not a new concept. In Genesis 3, the first emotion described after God said everything was “very good” was (you guessed it): fear. Adam was “afraid” and so he hid.

Fear is absolutely always connected with the future. Whether that future is a millisecond from now or a hundred years, there’s no way to fear the past (that’s called regret). We always, always fear the future.

I’m doing a study on phobias which are fancy ways to identify the stimuli that we encounter which invoke these anxious or panic responses and motivate us to do one of three things: fight, fly, or freeze.

We’ll break this down over the next several posts, but I wanted to start off with the number one fear in our society today. This one beat clowns, spiders and even death itself: public speaking.

Glossophobia

“fear of speaking in public”

Can we be honest for a second? Picturing an audience in their underwear is the most unhelpful advice ever given to anyone ever. It’s not funny and doesn’t actually defray my own anxiety about standing in front of people and making a presentation.

In my work with missions training, there is nothing more panic inducing than the revelation that all good missionaries will, at some point in their experience, preach a sermon.

Cold sweats, nausea and that general feeling in the pit of one’s stomach…yep it’s like clockwork. Even the mere idea that preaching might happen motivates people not to learn and give a new experience a shot, but inspires them to mentally formulate innovative scenarios which often include self-administered injuries at critical points in time (ie. just before a church service) that will disqualify them from the assignment of delivering a message of truth to a waiting crowd.

We’re going to dive into this over the next few conversations, but honestly: what’s the big deal?

Many fears and phobias involve legitimately dangerous activities, such as:

Hoplophobia – fear of guns Traumatophobia – fear of getting hurt

Aichmophobia – fear of sharp objects Arachnophobia – fear of spiders

Ophidiophobia – fear of snakes Selachophobia – fear of sharks

Public speaking just isn’t one of those dangerous activities. So what’s the problem?! That question is not an indictment; it’s a curiosity. I’ve seen people pass out, throw up, hyperventilate and even start sweating when they are about to take the stage.

There is something inside us that reacts involuntarily. It controls us and tells us what we can and cannot do. I want to figure out what it is. Because I believe if we can conquer our fears, we can change the world. There are messages that need to be spoken and I say:

THIS WON’T BE THE OBSTACLE THAT STOPS US!

As we go through this series, if something strikes a chord with you and you want help overcoming a fear in your life, leave me a comment and I’ll send you a declaration and prayer to help you dominate the fear in your life rather than be held prisoner by it.

Just because it amuses me, here’s your vocabulary word for today:

Arachibutyrophobia – the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth